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Making notifications and social media manageable

While Harris is making some progress in getting software designers
on board with the idea of designing products that don’t rely on user
addiction to succeed, there are plenty of products we use every day
that are already built around addictive behaviors.

Using Eyal’s “Hook Model,” products use triggers such as notifications
to encourage us to take actions—opening the app, looking at a photo,
etc. Variable rewards encourage us take action more often: opening our
inboxes, refreshing our social feeds, and so on, in the hope of a treat,
just like Skinner’s lab mice.

Eyal’s model also includes investment: a step where the user, having
already interacted with the product, is asked to invest time, money,
data, or effort to make the product more useful to them and make it
more likely they’ll come back in the future. Inviting friends to a social
network or learning to use new features of an app are examples of the
investment stage, that only increase our reliance on these products
and make us more likely to keep using them.

So until Harris can successfully get all software designers on board
with his hippocratic oath, it’s up to us to fight the addictive design of
the products we use every day.

Let’s look at three ways to do this.

■ ADJUST YOUR NOTIFICATION SETTINGS ■
Rather than completely culling all notifications—which, if you
remember the research I mentioned earlier, could make you more
anxious than having them all turned on—Davide Casali suggests only
keeping notifications turned on for the apps you really need to stay on
top of.

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